Unbound
by NonasGuard
Summary: When Lyna was told she could find a blood mage on the Storm Coast, she didn't expect it to be Anders, and for his part Anders didn't expect to live long enough to be found by anyone. Now both must deal with the past while navigating a turbulent present that Lyna has unknowingly cast off the rails and into uncharted territory.
1. Chapter 1

He ran.

Rain pelted him in frigid drops, pressing his hair slick against his neck and his clothes damp against his frame. His boots slid and sank in the sodden earth, and the broken stalks of grass marked his path as he crushed them underfoot in his haste. Behind him were the thunderous steps of men in heavy armor and the glow of crackling magelight obscuring his pursuers behind the glow of green and red. The tall stalks of grass gave way to stone and he leapt a creek as he continued to barrel onward. He slipped as he turned uphill, hands scraping against mud and stone before he came to his feet and continued up the slope.

Justice burned in his mind, lighting the backs of his eyes even as he closed them. The pursuers were Templars, it said, and their allies. They did not deserve to live. He would kill them. It would be just. The magic was at his fingertips, he could feel it in the air, ready to be pulled into use in only the ways a spirit could. He clenched his fists, shutting out the touch of the fade. He couldn't. No one else could die, so many mages and innocents had already died. He would run. He could kill them. It would be easy. He clenched his teeth and sucked in a breath. No. More. Killing. Magic crackled on his skin regardless.

He made a sharp left and struck out along the cliffs, his boots sliding over short clipped grass and his mind slowly filling with blue. He should kill them. He shouldn't, death was a terrible thing. He could see his hut silhouetted against the sky, standing at the edge of the fall ahead. He should not have lead them here. They pursued still, he could see his own shadow running ahead of him. He shouldn't kill them. But he could incapacitate. He could hurt them so badly they'd never touch a mage again. They would live. He compromised. Justice demanded the templars and their supporters break, never touch another mage. Justice didn't demand they die. Anders skidded to a stop and dragged a fallen branch out of the mud, allowing the blue to fill his mind, fill the branch, fill the air. It was in his eyes and on his lips.

"He's over here," one of them called, a man, and Anders opened his eyes just in time for the mage's light to come round the corner in all its blinding glory. The speaker was followed by three templars and a one-eyed Qunari bull at least two feet above its human companions.

The Qunari gave a low rumbling "heh" and hefted an enormous axe. "We've got him, boss."

Anders would hurt them. Anders would-He was wrenched down as the other consciousness arose, blotting out his own and its inefficient reservations. Justice leveled the branch toward the "boss." It was a redheaded elven man wearing the symbol of the chantry boldly on his shoulder and carrying a long wickedly gnarled staff. There was a smile on the man's lips, threatening to become a hunter's grin. "Surrender or death buddy, which'll it be?" Justice reached into the fade for power and his presence grew so strong as to nearly block out his own thoughts. Lightning crackled along the branch and fire sparked at its end, and then the air was magic and heat.

He shoved the branch through one Templar's armor as the whole thing dissolved into blue flame and lightning, and the steel melted like putty. The templar screamed and swung his shield at Justice but the spirit pushed the full of its weight into the man. Haggard and mal-maintained as the body was, a man with melting flesh in his side was not one paying close attention to his balance, and the two of them hit the ground, Justice plunging a lightning hand into the man's eyes. Justice brushed away a fireball, redirecting it at the earth as he twisted to avoid the second Templar's sword. He was knocked to the ground instead by her shield and rolled about a food before stopping and pulling himself to his feet. He brushed away another fireball as the remaining templars and Qunari closed on him, weapons raised-

-and suddenly the Qunari had an arrow in his good eye and crumpled like so much wet paper. Justice lunged for the woman Templar's head as his attackers turned to see their second assailant. The woman's amber eyes returned to Justice just a moment too late to step aside. The redhead mage gave a desperate shout and lifted his hand. Justice moved his own to dispel another spell, then buckled and then dropped abruptly as the redhead elf made a gesture and space itself tore open. Somewhere he was vaguely aware of shouting and footsteps and flame, but the screaming of the fade wind and the screaming of Justice and the pain pain pain pain of the fade tearing at his own mind, trying to tear off pieces and draw them in, was the only place his thoughts could even begin to be.

And then it was quiet. Justice was silent. Anders could feel his heartbeat in his skull. Anders could feel fear. Anders could feel pain, and everything everything hurt. His heart hammered in his chest and his fingertips and his head. He was starving. He was numb with cold. Physical sensation was so loud... He slowly lifted his eyes to see his savior striding toward him against a backdrop of flames.

She lowered her bow and stared down at him. The rain hammered down on both of them, and her hair was matted and dark, falling across her face in thick ropes and web-like wisps. The shadow of the stormy night hid her face. It did not hide her identity. He had once been far too familiar with that small lithe form. Her eyes glinted gold amidst the scattered light of flame. He knew who she was, but no words came. His mind felt empty, like it had been torn out, but at the same time full of completely indecipherable thoughts which blurred together and did not fit themselves to words.

"You." She said flatly. She looked nearly angry, but her eyes were more surprised, in spite of her furrowed brows. When he could not answer, she scanned the area and then knelt, forcing his chin up to look at his eyes. He would have flinched away from her touch if doing so had not required looking away. The sensation of skin on his own was strong enough it nearly hurt. "Anders."

"E-eh," he said, mouth open, and then swallowed and tried again. He searched the wall of dense fog inside his mind. "Ye-es," he breathed, his voice coming out a raspy shuddering thing. "Yes."

She searched his eyes a moment more and then dropped her hand from his face. She stood, and now her expression was one of annoyance as she glanced around again. Her eyes flicked further up the slope and her brows furrowed further, crinkling the vallaslin line that ran between them. "We need to go," she said, and he attempted to parse even that simple sentence through the meaningless chaos buzzing around his skull. By the time he had worked out the meaning, her hand was extended and she was pulling him to his feet. The movement was nauseating, and his grip on her hand tightened as he found his balance.

"Lee-len-" He tried to sort out her name, but she shushed him.

She flicked her eyes uphill, then back to him, and repeated the subtle motion twice before his eyes followed hers. A red creature made of flame and rage made physical bubbled down the hill toward them. Somewhere past it was a bright green, but Anders looked away from that. The color hurt his eyes. Lyna shook her hand free of his grip. "Follow me," she said in a low voice, "Be quiet and be quick about it." Then with steps light as a cat's she darted off along the cliff-face. Anders watched and then followed, at a slower pace. There was a hut he could see a ways off, and he knew he had known it, but it felt foreign and strange. He set himself to focus on walking.

.o.

-o-o-o-

'o'

He followed her numbly down to the shore where a small boat had been pulled ashore. She shoved it down the sandbank into the water and hurried him into it before casting away from the sandy bottom with an oar and heading out into the waters of the Waking Sea. Only once they had cast off did he speak.

"Comm-Lyna," he said.

"That is my name," she answered, not bothering to look up at him as she rowed.

"How... why..."

She lifted her eyes from the water, and she looked over him with a scowl. "I was told I would find a maleficar. An abomination."

"I-" He faltered. His memories were jumbled, off, distant. He tried to piece together a coherent stream of them. He had been... living... on a cliff. People wouldn't find him there. He needed them not to find... Suddenly the boat seemed much smaller. The Commander's eyes on him were too much, and he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He needed to get out, he needed-there was no air. He was-He probed the jumbled mess, but it refused to tell him any different. "Get-a-away." He tried to climb backward but backward was out of the boat, backward was the ocean, he couldn't breathe, he-

"Anders. This is a boat."

-needed to get out, needed to escape, needed to be anywhere anywhere anywhere else they would kill her they would-

There was no they. Where- What- Where was they, what was he supposed to exist as, where was he, what was he-

"Anders." Her voice was demanding.

He did not look at her, pushing himself further back into the furthest corner of their tiny boat. "I am- not-"

She wasn't rowing anymore. The boat was just rocking on the water.

"Put me back where I belong," he forced out.

Her tone was near threatening, and unquestionably bitter. "I don't think you want that or you'd have done it yourself years ago."

He lifted his eyes just enough to look at her crossed arms but not enough to see her eyes. "I'll... we'll... hurt you," he said, confused that the words felt empty of threat.

She snorted. "Too damned late." She looked away and the two of them sat in silence as rain filled the bottom of the boat. Finally, the commander took her oar back up with a sigh. When she spoke, her voice sounded hollow and distant. "You can come with me or I can put you right back down for the Inquisition and their Templar buddies to find. It's up to you."

"I..." Unbidden, tears rose to his eyes, and the tension in his lungs settled into a knot in his throat. He had been waiting to become something uncontrollable and irredeemable. He had been waiting for someone to kill him because it was the only option. But his mind had been... Foreign. Dangerous. Unpredictable. He buried his face in hands as the pain and guilt and relief rolled up through him, escaping in a small strangled cry. "I don't want to die."

There was a moment of quiet before the Commander spoke, and this time her voice was soft. "Then I won't let anyone touch you." She started rowing again and he thought he heard a quiet "Fen-harel take me," but the wind swallowed too much of her voice for him to be certain.

* * *

Thanks for reading, reviews are always appreciated. :)


	2. Chapter 2

_Lyna's eyes ran over the piece of parchment as Anders watched her. She could feel his eyes as well as if they were boring holes into her, and she pointedly did not acknowledge their presence. She could sense the growing anxiety in the way his fingers played at the fabric of his robes, and then the way his shoulders grew tense. She took her time. She had already read it. When Anders' eyes finally left her was when she turned to look at him, and the expression of reluctant anticipation on his face when he looked back to meet hers almost made her feel bad about the stony front that hid any indication of the cracks under the surface._

 _When she said nothing, he began uncomfortably. "...You did say you would never force me to stay here."_

 _It took real effort to keep the displeasure out of her voice. She did her best at a hard monotone. "Yes, I did. I will be no one's jailer."_

 _"No one's warden?" He flashed her a smile that wasn't quite convincing. "Come now, it's not_ exactly _as though I plan on cutting off all contact. I'll write..."_

 _Lyna could not keep the bitter smile off her face. "You do care. That's cute."_

 _"Oh for-" His humor burned away, quickly replaced by frustration and hurt. "Lyna... It's not about you, it's only-"_

 _"How much better the circle is than the wardens and how bleeding eager you are to get back to them?" All illusions of neutrality were gone as she rose from her chair, slamming his application down on the desk._

 _"Now that isn't entirely fair, is it?" He began toward her, making a sharp gesture with his hand. "They're asking me to teach, not be their property."_

 _Lyna's hands balled to shaking fists at her sides. "That's not the bloody point!" She bit her lip and swallowed hard as heat rose to her face. There was a moment when he fumbled for words, not finding them, and then she cut off whatever direction he was going with a sharp "fine." She snatched up a pen and signed the request form hard enough as to nearly tear the paper before throwing the pen back down._

 _"Why do you have to make this so difficult?"_

 _"I'm not. It's signed. Done. You're free to go."_

 _Frustrated, Anders took a step to move around her desk toward her. "Yeah, just a thought,_ consider _listening to me? I have it on good authority that's what real adults do, so I thought you might give it a try." A moment later his form was shoved into his chest more forcefully than was strictly necessary. He stumbled back, clutching at the paper with one hand and reaching for her with the other. "Alright, I'm sorry for being insensitive, but I hardly think I'm asking for anything unreasonable! It's only a couple-"_

 _"No, you aren't asking for anything unreasonable, I'm just angry. We are not talking. Now get out of my office."_

.o.  
-o-o-o-  
'o'

They made landfall in a cove a small ways down the coast, and Lyna dragged the rowboat into the bushes and covered it with branches before heading inland. They walked for what must have been hours through the driving rain, and slowly the fear and panic resolved into a vague stewing of other thoughts and memories. Occasionally the commander would pause and drop silently into the brush, and Anders would do his best to follow suit. Usually, nothing would happen and eventually she would rise and continue her silent trek. Once, he could hear horsemen not far off. But once they escaped the sound of crashing waves into the woods, these brief moments of stealth ceased altogether.

"Why did you do that," he asked quietly when the edge of the woods was a good ways behind them. Tension grew in the muscles of her shoulders, and her pace quickened. It was the only answer he received. He stared at her back thinking about nothing in particular for a long time. "...how did you find me?"

"I wasn't looking for you," she said tersely.

"What were you looking for then?"

"A blood mage. Which I found."

Memories stirred, dozens of faces, twisting and distorting into abominations and monsters, a girl bleeding on the floor. They felt distant, but urgent. And dangerous. The memory of shock and horror and vowing never to become that. Maybe he already had been. He shied away from the thought. His voice was hard and strained, as though someone had pulled it taut. "I don't do that anymore."

"Yeah, I didn't want to see you either."

"Where are we going?"

"A safe place. To plan."

"What exactly do you need me for?"

"It's none of your-" She stopped speaking abruptly. There was another long quiet, and a second brief halting of Lyna's steps. Just as he was giving up on receiving an answer, she looked back at him. "Anders." Her expression was one of stony neutrality. He stilled. "...not now." Her eyes fell away from him and lingered at his feet before she turned her back on him, resuming her steady pace. The remainder of their walk was conducted in mute silence. It was the first time his mind had been his alone in years.

He had spent so long asking Justice to leave him be. Now it felt uncomfortably, terribly quiet.

By the time they reached the hut the trees had grow, and the air was full with rain and fog to the point of near opaqueness. The hut itself was a small wooden structure, built quickly on rough earth and hidden til near contact by trees, and its interior was hidden in deep shadow behind small windows. In front of it sat a large golden-brown wolf. As they approached, the Commander raised her hand for Anders to stop. He did.

Lyna herself approached the wolf and knelt as it padded around her and licked at her teeth and face. "Aneth ara, Revas," she murmured to the large she-wolf, stroking its fur and running her fingers along it. "Ma serennas, ir nuvenin tel dar mana." The wolf butted its head against her appreciatively and then perked up, looking at Anders.

Images came to mind unbidden of speaking to the wolf in the hallways of vigil's keep during the small hours of the morning, of teeth and darkspawn corpses and the feeling of blood on his face and robes, of Ser Pounce curled up a tiny ball of orange against the wolf's golden flank. He blinked the memories away and actually looked. The wolf was older than she had been when Anders had last seen her, assuming she was even the same one. He was no expert on animal lifespans, but Revas looked larger, a bit, and greyer. Even so, she was clearly a powerful animal.

Revas raised her nose toward him, but Lyna's fingers tangled within the fur found a tighter grip. "That is Anders. Do not harm him." The words were accompanied by a motion made into the wolf's flank, and Revas returned her attention to Lyna. "Thank you," Lyna said, voice hushed. "Dareth." With that final word, Lyna released her companion and Revas loped away, into the trees and out of sight. Anders had not realized til that moment that he had been holding his breath.

"Come in," said Lyna. "Find yourself a blanket and a place on the floor. There are no spare beds." She lit a candle and entered the small hut. Anders followed.

.o.  
-o-o-o-  
'o'

Anders stood alone before a towering gate and silvery walls. A templar stood at either side of him, and one of the two held him in place with a heavy gauntleted hand. Though the air felt rife with magic, Anders could not breathe in enough of it to light it between his fingers, and the templar's grip was far too heavy for him to pull himself free. The second templar knocked twice on the wooden gate, and slowly it opened to reveal a courtyard, sparse of vegetation and overlooked by a stone balcony. A woman stood atop the balcony, looking down at him over the rails, long pale hair bound by a red cowl. Her head was ringed with a halo of the sort the chantry would occasionally place behind Andraste in paintings, but instead of gold the templar woman's was blue, and sharp enough that he could feel it from where he stood trying to cut him.

There was another woman in the courtyard as well, though he could hardly see her through the fragments of glass that hung in the air around her. She too was blue, but it was darker and edged with subtle traces of gold. Two others were at her side, and Anders saw a younger self glance back at him from the glass woman's side. Their eyes met.

The world fragmented. The woman on the balcony had black hair an a knife in hand, and the halo of blue was his. It cut into his skull and their should have been pain but instead there was only a deep feeling of dread and wrongness as he fell sideways, disoriented. There were demons everywhere and the woman surrounded in glass killed the templar holding him in a single swift motion that left two more templars behind. They shoved him roughly against the wood of the gate, twisting into a grey mass of claws as they did. The glass fell away from the woman behind them, and her cold yellow eyes held him with icy contempt. He lunged at her, through the masses of grey flesh, and his fingers pressed into her throat, except it was a copy of himself who he strangled and he could feel his own fingers cutting off airflow as he did, knew he was doing the same to himself as to the mirror image before him, but he had to- The face in front of him was no longer his own but that of a dark-haired girl, blood pouring from where he had touched her, pouring from her throat and his fingertips and staining the very world red. He drew back in horror-

Anders awoke in darkness, heart pounding, images still running behind his eyes in the absence of truer imagery. His breath came quick and shallow and his chest felt tight, at once too light and too heavy. He curled his body against the wall, clutching his head in his hands. He'd killed a girl he'd killed her he'd killed her he'd killed her. A wave blotchy of color flashed across his vision, rolling over the dark and lingering even after he had squeezed his eyes shut to block it out. Ghosts of faces arose out of the invented color, not real ones but wrong ones, gaping abstract ones that felt so wrong it was threatening. He opened his eyes, but they did not fade, and remained mutating themselves further out of proportion til he brought sparks to his fingertips and the true image of wavering orange flame replaced the invented horrors. Gradually his breathing slowed as he stared into it, not daring to look away into the darkness. The pressure in his throat lifted. The adrenaline faded away to mild shivers. Only his mind remained wide awake, focusing on the flame to the obscuring of all else.

Eventually there was the sound of a match striking and a larger light filled the room. Tentatively, Anders' eyes left the glowing light at the end of his fingers and traveled up to see Lyna, barefoot and dressed in pale nightclothes, looking at him from across the room. She silently made her way around the table, lantern in hand, and knelt by him, looking at the flame at Anders' fingertips. Anders looked at her, and at the orange reflection in her pale eyes, turning them from blue to an odd golden grey.

"We are safe here," she said simply.

Anders did not feel safe. He felt terrified. He felt wrong. His very existence felt warped and strange. He did not want her to touch him for fear blood might start leaking from the point of contact. He did not feel safe. "We-I-killed a girl. I think." When Lyna's eyes met his in a frown, he went on. "I can't be certain." Her frown deepened.

"Why not?"

He tried to describe the fog and distortion, the utter lack of clarity. "Everything feels as though it was all... turned sideways," he began, and the sound of his own voice drew reality back in, allowed reality to breathe and draw out the tension in his mind through his words. He went faster. "Or like it was bigger once, and then suddenly, bang! You're small again and all you have is an expired self and a head full of old thoughts built for someone ten feet tall. And that person is so different nothing of theirs makes any sense anymore..." The fire on his fingers died away and he looked away from her. "I wasn't a good person."

Lyna shot him an annoyed frown. "You were always a selfish bastard."

"I know."

"Didn't make you a bad guy." Anders looked back at her as she slid down onto the floor, legs crossed. She set her lantern on the floor with a dull thump. "Just a deserter and a liar."

He flinched a little. "I started a war. The circles dissolved, the templars want blood, innocents died. I..." The smell of blood and shit filled his nose and images flashed in his mind. Cobblestone streets running with red, bodies, towering abominations, patrols of men killing anyone who might be a mage, which was everyone. The sounds of shouting and steel had followed him well past the walls of the city.

"Anders." His eyes snapped back into focus and blinked away the memories. Only memories. They had felt very real a moment ago. He looked at her and she held eye contact for several moments. Then there was the subtlest pressing together of her eyebrows, the smallest tightening of her lips, and she looked away. "The war was a cavern full of gas waiting for a spark. It was no fault of yours. Go back to sleep."

He didn't want to sleep. "I can't be absolved of guilt just like that. I- I planned that. For a long time, I think."

"You want me to call you a villain, tell me why I should."

And slowly, often halting to pull apart his own jumbled memories, he did.

.o.  
-o-o-o-  
'o'

 _Lyna was sparring with Nathaniel and beating him soundly when Anders found her. Nathaniel was an archer and couldn't use swords (or in this case sticks) worth a rat's ass, and she was hitting harder than was strictly necessary and had resolved to feel bad about it later. She needed this. She didn't need to hurt someone per se, but she needed very badly to hurt someone. She saw the mage standing on the green out of the corner of her eye and she swung her stick as hard as she could at Nathaniel's face. The movement was telegraphed seconds in advance, that much force makes a person predictable, and her stick snapped in half against the pair Nathaniel raised to block. Half of it went flying across the field. The other half she dropped to the ground._

 _Nathaniel's eyes surveyed her for a moment, concerned, and then rose to Anders about a hundred feet off. He looked back at her. "I take it we are done," he said neutrally. "I will be in the barracks if you need me." That was about as close to an offer to talk as Nathaniel ever came, and Lyna forced a smile, just to let him know it was appreciated. Then he excused himself._

 _Lyna strode toward Anders briskly and purposefully, and he came toward her at a slightly slower pace. "You have ten seconds," she said._

 _"I had been hoping you would be a little less angry with me by now-"_

 _"I'm not."_

 _Anders sighed. "Walk with me to the river, alright? We can talk and things will get better and maybe if we're very lucky there will be rainbows at the end." He extended a hand to her. She did not take it, but she went with him regardless._

 _They sat by the tree they always sat by, Lyna with her arms crossed over folded knees and Anders trying to reach out to her without being too intrusive. She knew he was attempting to be comforting, but she did not permit him to touch her._

 _"There's a story," Anders began, breaking the silence. "I heard it from this one dwarf during my fifth escape attempt, a big hairy fellow with atrocious luck at dice. The wisest king Orzammar ever had, back when all the tunnels were connected and not full of darkspawn, called his finest smiths and said to them, 'craft me an object so powerful that it will make me glad when I am in the deepest of despair and sad when I am at my most joyful. And the smiths all spent days debating what they would craft, but after a week, they had it. So a week later they returned to him with a ring, inscribed with the words 'this too shall pass.'" Lyna looked at him, anger and hurt gnawing at her insides but entirely absent from her face, and Anders gave her the sorriest expression she'd ever seen. "This too shall pass."_

 _"Don't," said Lyna, "I need you," but quietly, with pain in her voice. Anders reached out to cup her face in his hand, and she allowed him to draw her close and gently kiss her. She kissed him back, hungry, desperate kisses and then angry ones with teeth and force as she pushed him down onto the hard earth. How dare he._

 _She cried as she took him, and afterward she raged against him with hurt and bitterness worn on her sleeve. She didn't speak to him again, and at week's end a pair of mages came to collect him and he was gone._

* * *

Thanks for reading. Reviews are always appreciated. :)


	3. Chapter 3

_"There you are!" Lyna was pulled from her reverie as the mage, also bearing the low hum of taint, entered the room. He surveyed the scene for a brief moment. "Do you spend all your time watching men sleep? Somehow I imagined you doing something grander."_

 _"I spend my time praying to the gods that new wardens don't die in their joinings," she said flatly._

 _Anders paused, caught off-guard the seriousness of the statement, but quickly recovered. "So where in the prayer does the bit with the passing out start?"_

 _She glared at him. "Nowhere. That was unintended."_

 _"I'm just that boring then?" Anders concluded with a smirk. "Pity, I almost thought we had something!"_

 _"How you came to that conclusion is a mystery," she answered. "I've got someone. Besides, I prefer to have a long history of shared personal hell with someone before I fall in love with him."_

 _"A romantic, then? How exciting."_

 _"A peeved one, yes." She grimaced. It had not taken so very long for the distance to grow between herself an Alistair, what with his spending all his time learning the ropes at court and her general dislike of all things bureaucracy. She had expected that their relationship might lapse in intensity once they were no longer spending all their time together, but the speed of the shift had been frustrating and disappointing. It made her wonder if there had ever been anything more than a basic attraction at all, and the idea that she might have based her entire future on a chantry boy's crush was humiliating. She hoped he felt more strongly than that, but his growing friendship with Anora and the fact that she had so quickly been stationed so far away only fueled her insecurity._

 _Anders closed the door behind him and sat down on the stairs, a foot or so to her left. There was a short silence before he spoke. "So what makes this guy more interesting to watch than me, come on." Laughter was in his voice, but he kept a straight face, and she couldn't help but smile._

 _"Oh, I think he's prettier," she joked with a grin._

 _Anders faked a mortified expression. "Prettier than me?"_

 _She schooled her face into a look of extraordinary seriousness interrupted only by her thin arching brows. "I'm afraid so."_

 _"A shame, I was going to pride myself on being the fairest of them all, but it seems I'm not after all. You do understand I'll have to kill him now." She laughed and he gave her a gratified smile. "Now if you'd just do that more instead of taking everything so seriously, we might be getting somewhere."_

.

...

.

When Anders awoke a second time, Lyna was gone, but when he attempted to venture outside the small three-room shack he found the wolf sitting by the door. It-she-whuffed at him from her place on the damp earth, and stood when he stepped outside. Cautiously he approached Revas, and she moved to meet him. She smelled like wet dog and rich soil, and allowed him to touch her when he reached out to do so. There was something calming about the animal, about the way that she so clearly lacked any of the anxiety that knotted itself away in his muscles and the way her presence guaranteed Lyna's return.

The thought of his old commander carried conflicting feelings of comfort and dread. She had wanted him for blood magic. Or. Wanted a blood mage at least. That prospect brought bile to his throat. How could she- How could he ever- Blood and corpses, the smell of gore and entrails, drew to the fore of his mind. Blood magic. Flesh distorting, bulging under skin pulled too tight. He found his fingers clutching Revas' fur, and sweat beaded on his skin in spite of the cold wind. This hadn't always... Once upon a time the thought of blood magic hadn't been nauseating; Once upon a time it had been normal. It was one of many feelings that felt too big for him, too strong. There were so many of them, he could hardly feel anything at all when they deserted him. He felt alien in his own mind.

Lyna emerged from the trees, birds hanging from one hand. They were some sort of gull, and both had been shot in the torso and were thoroughly dead. She paused, looking at Anders for a moment, then padded around the back of the house. He watched her go, but elected to remain with Revas. When the faint smell of blood touched the air, he retreated back into the hut. Revas followed him to the door, but trotted away when he stepped inside. The room was dim. Anders watched the lone candle burn. It flickered and wavered slowly in the dimness. He watched it pull upward from the wick, orange with blue at the center. When the door opened behind him, he was closer to it than he had thought.

"Food," said Lyna. She crossed the room to the empty fireplace and settled on her haunches by it. She carefully set three pieces of wood in a small pyramid. "Do you still eat?" Anders was painfully aware of his hunger, but the prospect of eating filled him with a vague twisting in his gut. He nodded, and watched as Lyna slowly kindled her fire and cooked the plucked and cleaned gulls over it. Every once in a while she would cut a piece of meat off a bird and eat it. When the first bird was nearly gone, she looked back at him. "Get down here," she said. She sounded nearly annoyed, but it wasn't an order. It sounded more like an insult than anything else. Even so, he joined her, sitting on the floor before the fire.

She cut him a piece of meat, and he reluctantly consumed it. It was stringy, but it was food and tasted not unlike chicken. Once he had swallowed the first piece, his hunger came in full force and he found himself ravenous. He ate quickly when handed pieces of meat, and when Lyna removed the remainders of the birds from the fire and gave him one, he demolished it in minutes and remained hungry even after. Lyna on the other hand ate slowly, watching him.

After she had eaten about half of her bird, she sighed. "Well we're here, aren't we." Her voice was nearly flat, but there was a light inflection in it, as if she was evaluating him. "Are you going to help me or not?" There was more weight on those words than he had expected. They worried him.

"Help you with blood magic, you mean." He met her eyes. "I won't."

She narrowed her eyes, and when she answered her voice was hard. "Help me belay my death sentence. But yes, it involves blood magic." She folded her arms across her chest and sat back on her heels.

"Dealing with demons won't help. Even if you expected half of what was promised from one, what's to stop it taking more than you offered? I won't be a maleficar for you," he said, but she cut him off.

"Is that what Justice says, or did you come to this conclusion without his help?" Lyna rose and began to walk about the room. "Perhaps it was the same fit of self righteousness that caused you to burn down a temple to your own god?"

Images of fire. Sulfur. The streets running red with blood. "No good has ever come of blood magic, and none ever will. It doesn't take Justice to-" Pain, flashes of the fade, green, and wavering. He gasped. For a moment he didn't know who he was, or where. The final words only barely stumbled past his lips. "-see that."

Lyna gritted her teeth and glared at him. "This is the only thing I've found that was even a chance, the only opportunity to live that's even been _hinted_ at. I-" She sucked in a breath and for a moment was silent. Slowly she took a deep breath and pressed her fingers into the wood of the table as her breath hissed out between her teeth. "I understand. I'll find someone else. Good day."

"Comm-" He almost tried to stop her as she stalked out the door, but the pain on the inside of his skull came again, sharper, and the images of the fade flickered in once again, green with air full of hanging glass. By the time it faded she was gone.

.

...

.

When Lyna had not returned in half an hour, Anders gave himself leave to eat the food she had left behind. When she had not returned by midday, Anders went looking for her. It wasn't that he was concerned. He felt almost nothing, save mild hunger, a simmering anxiety, and a vague revulsion. He felt increasingly as though he had overstayed his welcome, somehow. What pieces he had of the last few years felt like pain and fear, like borrowed time. More, he sought out the Commander because she was the closest thing he had to a direction. The last time he had seen her, he felt as though he had been very different from what the flashbacks, images, fragments told him he was. Should be. Years old memories told him she was angry, or that she had decided he wasn't worth her time.

Revas, who had been sitting beneath a tree, followed him as he wandered into the woods, and then took point. The wolf would find Lyna. The two of them walked, wolf loping along through the underbrush and Anders picking his way around bushes and brambles. Eventually Revas came to a stop at the edge of the trees. Anders stumbled out onto the grass. Ahead was a set of low cliffs and crags, birds circling and scrawing. Peering down from the crags from between the rocks was Lyna, perched just short of the ledge. As he approached, she lifted a finger to her lips without looking up. He looked out over the ledge with her. Many feet below was a campsite, and moving about it a number of figures in robes, mostly blue. Silently, Lyna lifted herself from the stones and moved away from the ledge.

"What," she demanded in a low, tense tone.

He wasn't actually certain, now that he was here. "You're not leaving, are you?" was all he could think to say.

"It's my place you were staying at," she said sourly. She glared at him, long and hard, then conceded, "I might." She folded her arms across her chest, as if daring him to challenge her, and Anders knew at that moment that though her face remained the same, the Warden Commander might as well be a stranger. It had been nearly ten years since he had last seen her, and her life had not stopped in his absence.

"Are you going with them," he asked, indicating the edge of the cliff. He had not intended for it, but the question came out sounding like an accusation.

"Maybe," said the Commander. "They're a violent lot, but they might be able to give me what I need if any of them is a blood mage. Then again, if none of them is, asking is a great way to get my throat cut. So if you'll let me be, I'm going to continue trying to find out."

"Why do you want blood magic that much? Are you sick? There are better things than deals with demons for that. I could still help you, you know." He could be useful, he could be worth keeping alive, he could-How strange to think that he could take care of her when he hardly knew himself. Still, somehow, he wanted to.

"Am I sick?" Lyna laughed, but it was high, false, and disbelieving. "Anders we're both sick. And some of us can't just run away and forget it." She looked away, bitter. "And if I'm just going to be used and thrown away, I don't want to die alone and in service of other people's bullshit." She attempted to stalk past him but he caught her sleeve and she stopped.

"You can't cure the taint."

"Who told you that? Me?"

"Yes, actually." Something old began to stir under the fog and anxiety. Frustration, anger, coiling like a serpent in his chest. "Were you lying to me? Is that just what you tell the recruits so they don't think to leave?"

She didn't look at him, but her face pressed itself into something between a grimace and a scowl. "You know me better than that."

"Do I? I don't know I even know _myself_ better than that. Half of the things I can recall contradict each other, all of them feel far away, or like another bloody person, my head is full of silence, except when it's so loud that it hurts. As for you, I haven't known you in years! You never-"

Her head snapped up. "Came after you when you left? Fought my dismissal to come back and save you from whatever compromise they made to make up for my 'mistakes'? Stopped you from running away or burning down a city?" Her voice was unquestionably angry, and so icy it chilled him. "I'm not the one who abandoned you Anders, I just didn't cling to you like a desperate child when you left." She caught herself and hesitated, realizing what had just come out of her mouth, or perhaps the volume at which it had done so. There was a long slow exhale of breath before she pulled her sleeve away. "I never lied to you. You learn I think I was wrong and decide I'm a liar. You see idiots, untaught and unregulated, ruin themselves and forget that once you knew how to practice sensibly. I don't know what your time with the Champion was like, but she seems to have robbed you of all your sense."

"Hawke was the only thing that made any sense," he blurted out before he had a chance to think about it. Love and hurt, anger and betrayal all churned about in the place where memories of Hawke should be, but the information itself was fuzzy and fragmented. It mixed in with the anger to create a maelstrom of emotion that was overwhelming in contrast with the near emptiness of a few minutes ago.

"Hawke seems to have robbed you of any belief in the concept of nuance, which doesn't set her as any shining paragon in my book."

"Oh yes, and you're all about nuance now, aren't you?" he growled. "I'm honestly surprised you haven't called me 'human' as a substitute for fool." Lyna drew back, shoulders forward and hands curled into fists at her sides, and the fierceness in her eyes flickered for a moment and then doubled into searing cold hate.

"And yet I bared my heart to several of them and haven't stalked on back to my clan yet. Credit where it's due."

"Your clan is an excellent example of how blood magic brings only pain." Lyna stiffened, and he could see the questions and fear competing with her pride and her need to win, to hurt him. There was a silence of several moments, and Anders began to regret the statement, began to think about the pain that might be caused by inflicting upon Lyna the swirling memories of demons and mirrors and Merril crying out over the body of her mentor, memories he had once felt intensely about but now held as mostly meaningless shards of information useful only as verbal knives.

"My clan isn't my problem anymore," Lyna finally said, voice hollow and flat. "My inevitable death is my problem." She paused and looked away. Her words were stiff and textureless, like cardboard. "Yours too, so long as you're here. And I've heard rumors you can draw out the taint with blood magic."

"Frankly," he said, "I'd rather die." The words felt hollow and untrue in his mouth, words of the larger person who'd up and walked away.

"Then I should have left you to die alone on the cliffs," she said, but her voice broke a little as she did so and she did not look at him. Anders felt hurt and quiet fear, but also a moment of familiarity, pity even, for the Commander and her thinly veiled pain. He knew it must break her heart to say such a thing to anyone under her, let alone him. He became suddenly aware that he might be uniquely able to hurt her in such a way. The thought was accompanied by guilt. Cautiously, he took a step toward her.

"Comm... Lyna. There must be other ways." He didn't know if it was true, he couldn't recall having heard of anything. He needed her though. To survive. To recover. And she needed... well, he couldn't provide for survival, not immediately, but surely he could help, somehow.

Lyna drew away as he came close. "I'm not your commander anymore. We're not friends," followed by a quieter, "Please don't touch me."

"I take it back, does that you happy? I want to stay."

"...You do. Lovely. Fantastic."

"May I?"

Lyna growled low, under her breath. Then she looked at him, and met his gaze with her own. "Because I promised to keep you alive and for no other reason." Her eyes were empty and her tone low, almost defeated.

He nodded almost imperceptibly. "Thank you Lyn-."

"Commander," she said, somehow making the word sound sharp in spite of its tired tone. "You will refer to me as commander. Is that understood?"

"...yes Commander."

.

...

.

That night he dreamed of darkness, of winding streets and mirror images and people who melted into being only long enough to jab at him with shards of glass. He dreamed of a deep dark stone pathway and a suit of armor all in gleaming silver and feathers of gold. He dreamed that as the visor of the helm fell over his eyes, the world cracked like glass and turned to blue and that he could not pull the helmet off. He looked up and the street was full of himself, some in his ordinary dress and some in gleaming plate and all looking back at him as the armor itself became malicious and turned its attentions inward...

He awoke in a sweat, and when he lit a candle to calm himself he discovered Lyna awake and curled in a chair staring into space. She did not interfere as he slowly worked himself back down into the knowledge that what he had seen in the fade was not true. She only watched. He did not mock or jab at her when, after he had calmed himself, she quietly requested he tell her about her clan. He tried his best to salvage what memories he could of Merril, and when dawn came and he was finished, she thanked him quietly and retreated to her room in silence.

.

...

.

 _"Actually though," said Anders, leaning back against the stone steps, "there must be a reason you insist on watching us sleep."_

 _She sighed, resting her head on folded hands. "It's because I think... I think after something like the Joining it's important that you don't wake up alone." She frowned, unsure how to explain, and well aware that the comment had sounded at least mildly dirty. Anders seemed to be debating whether to comment, so she elaborated quickly. "When I joined the order there was this man, Duncan... I suppose he was Commander at the time, and he had a new recruit named Alistair, he's king now, you've heard of him I'm sure. They were both in charge of my well-being, more or less. I hated them both with a vengeance." She bit her lip. "They were there after my Joining and maybe I did hate them, but after the dreams... Alistair was like an anchor, I guess. Made the nightmares feel a little less real." She remembered waking up and seeing the sky blood red with sunrise with the dragon still flashing in front of her eyes, its wings spread and its twisted voice singing, echoing, calling. And Alistair, she'd made his life such hell for so long after, she never took well to incompetence. But just then, his face and voice had drawn her away from the dragon and into the waking world. He had been the one to offer her water, clear the taste of tainted blood from her mouth. He had borne her anger as though it was nothing and steadied her in her new world._

 _"You had nightmares too?" asked Anders. "That sounds sadly unlike a coincidence."_

 _"The dreams are a universal constant, I think," she answered. "They were worse during the Blight but they don't... they don't exactly go away."_

 _"Oh." She glanced over at him and saw him frowning._

 _She patted his shoulder lightly. "It's okay, they don't come every night. It'll be fine."  
Anders changed the subject. Neither one of them mentioned the dreams again._


	4. Chapter 4

_Nathaniel was obviously displeased. He paced back and forth, arms folded across his chest. "You could have told us this before you put us through the Joining."_

 _"Well, I never wanted to live forever anyway," quipped Anders._

 _They stood in a small antechamber on the second floor of the keep, door closed. Lyna leaned against it, subtly blocking the exit. If either of the two men was going to get angry with her, she wanted to have the argument and be done with, not worry about double meanings and dark insinuations hiding in every word for the next month. She hated noble courts. She didn't need her team to turn into one. "I don't recruit normal people for good reason, I'm sure you can see that."_

 _Nathaniel ceased his pacing and turned to face her, his lips drawn into a thin line and his face a picture of mistrust and betrayal. "And yet you were willing to recruit the two of us? I know you don't like the Howes but if you wanted me dead you could have just done it cleanly!"_

 _"I didn't do it to murder you! You were in prison, at very real risk of the hanging you suggested for yourself. I didn't have a lot of options, unless I wanted to let you wander off so you could kill me when you saw fit."_

 _"I-"_

 _"What were the words? 'I might come back, and next time you might not catch me'?" She shook her head. "I take death threats seriously."_

 _"Yeah, you get your highs off of them," said Anders. One edge of his mouth twitched up, but the expression was not at all reminiscent of a smile._

 _She didn't have anything to say to that, so she said nothing. He was right, of course, there was no point in denying it. They had both seen her fight. She could feel control of the conversation slipping through her fingers. The hope had been that she could achieve some sort of kinship with these people, like she had with the friends who had helped her fight the blight. She knew it wasn't all going to happen in a single week, but having so much dislike in her direction already didn't speak well of the likelihood of friendships. She could only hope they would come to terms with it given time._

.

...

.

"You can draw the taint out," she said, breaking the silence in the small warm room.

The rain had started coming down harder, and even Revas had drifted inside to wait out the storm by the comfort of the fireplace. Anders sat by the window, sorting herbs and roots that Lyna had brought back from the surrounding wilderness. The action was comfortable, familiar, safe, and on top of that it felt useful. Lyna for her own part had been staring into the fire ever since she had coaxed it to life, eyes dark.

"Push it onto another being. Or drain it into one." She smiled into the fire mirthlessly. "At least that's the idea."

Bay leaf crumbled in Anders' hands. "You would kill them,"

"-or reduce them to darkspawn, yes, I know." She grimaced. "Even if there's something to it, it's not much of a trade for the blood mage."

The smell of blood, of rot, of stale air and near-drowning threatened at the edges of his consciousness, and he swallowed hard. He spent several long moments gathering the crumbled pieces of leaf, focusing on the simple action to steel himself against it, before he realized what she had said. "You were going to kill me!"

Lyna's eyes flicked toward him, anger drawing at their corners, and then back to the fire and down. "I wasn't looking for you."

Anders was aghast. "You were going to kill some poor sod fool enough to conjure a demon for you. All due respect, but that doesn't sound a whole lot better." He turned to face her, away from the window, accusation in his eyes. "And it's hardly as if you stopped asking me for help when you learned-"

"I was going to kill an abomination."

A swell of emotion rolled up inside of him. Stinging at the edges like broken glass and too big to fill his skin, it raked at the inside of his ribs and throat. _I'm not-_ He was. His own voice, resonant, echoing, boomed inside his mind, condemning abominations, condemning blood magic. They had stepped off the path of righteousness, they deserved-I am not a demon. He was an abomination, he had been, that was why he was here, he was dangerous, waiting to die, waiting. He choked. He couldn't breathe. A sharp pain exploded behind his eyes, shimmering and sharp, and he pulled himself away, toward the wall, toward the window. He saw Hawke's green eyes staring down at him. _You're a monster._

"Anders?"

He wasn't certain if her voice was concern or trepidation. Lyna was in front of him now, hand resting by her knife. Instinctively he pulled a shield from the air, but the motion felt like dragging his hand through knives, and for a moment shimmering blue burned the edges of his mind as his mana burned off into nothing.

"Anders, _stop_." The phrase was an order, but she was afraid. He could hear the uncertainty in the way her voice pitched a little higher than it should, see in her eyes that she was deciding whether to leap toward him or spring away, calculating risk. "Stop, now."

He cut off the spell, but the mana didn't stop. It drained away until he felt a husk, dry, empty, and continued to pull. He was drowning. He was blind.

The green greys of the fade were dotted with broken glass and lines of blue blood, flowing between them. The air was full with magic, with the fog of ideas ever so easily twisted into being. As the thin streams of blue rolled downward, they dragged shards of glass with them, and shards of something else. Metal? Anders reached down to touch the blood and recoiled as it tried to drag him down into its swift current. Memories flowed in those waters. His own, and someone else's. Those that belonged to him reached out with grasping limbs in a frenzied attempt to pull him back, and he was forced to make a hasty retreat. A voice behind him intruded into the fade.

"Anders? Bloody... Come back, damn you." He opened his eyes to see an elven woman crouched over him, fingers resting on the side of his neck. "Wake-up, thank the gods." She pulled away, sitting back on her knees as he blinked the green and blue out of his vision.

He shifted uncomfortably. Everything hurt, and he felt drained, both physically and mentally. His left hand was bleeding, and he could taste iron in his throat as well. He was sweating, but the air felt cold, and while he felt thoroughly stripped of mana, the magic in the air was nearly palpable. Rain continued to patter against the window, a heavy cloak of grey draped over everything but the fire. He fished for her name, dragging memories carefully back from the depths of the fade. The tapestry of time felt frayed and full of holes, but he didn't know the images in it well enough to know what was missing, and he was too tired to search. He let it fall back into place like an old worn cloak.

"What did you just cast?" Momentarily, the commander seemed to have cast aside her frustration with him in favor of concern, and something else. Curiosity, perhaps, or anxiety?

"A... shield? At least, that's what-were you...?" He scanned her for signs of injury, but found none and slowly exhaled. His eyes met hers and he felt his throat tighten. "You would be better off without me."

"And why is that?"

"I'm-" He choked on the next word, and swallowed hard. "We're an abomination."

She rolled her eyes and pushed up onto the balls of her feet. "So you've said."

"We're not safe."

"I can see that." She shifted up into a crouch and then pulled herself to her feet and retreated into the other room. Moments later she returned, bandaging in hand. "So far you seem more a threat to yourself than to me. Just let me know if you plan on burning a hole through my chest first." She crouched by him again, and then after examining his hand a moment, slid down into sitting cross-legged to his left. "What in Fen-harel's name did you do to your hand?"

Anders looked. His hand looked as though he'd cut across it with half a dozen tiny knives. He shrugged and pressed his teeth together as he watched Lyna carefully bandage it up, pressing torn edges of skin together before pulling the fabric over them. He closed his eyes and breathed as deeply as he could manage. "I can't say I know. Only I really wouldn't like to repeat the experience."

Lyna's eyes flicked up to his, and he felt suddenly as though he was being assessed. After a long moment, she muttered something to herself and returned to his hand, brows pushed together and mouth drawn into a scowl.

"I wouldn't have killed you," she said when the bandages were finished. "I made you a promise."

"I made you a promise too," Anders said flatly.

"Well, at least one of us keeps our word then, hm," she muttered. She didn't speak to him after that.

center.

...

./center

He dreamed of Hawke, standing by a bed in a brothel, pressing her own knife to her neck. He could see through the glass hanging in the air the magic dripping red, tying threads about her arm and holding it steady as her eyes filled with panic. The knife drew closer to her exposed throat as her eyes darted pleadingly toward him.

He reached out with magic to dispel the threads, but suddenly it was him, holding his own shard of glass to his throat. He looked for help but found only Hawke, threads tied to her fingers as she slid down onto the bed in front of him. She smiled at him, and he tried to reach out, tried to go to her, tried to ask for help, ask her to stop, but he found himself voiceless and immobile. Panicked, he watched as another him stepped into his vision and approached her. He tried to shout, tell her it wasn't him, but the copy pushed Hawke down against the bed and as her hand moved to touch its face, the threads pulled against his hand and drove the glass into his throat.

He shattered, the scene shattered, and he could move again. He was surrounded by Templars as his hand pushed through the armor of one like it was soft butter and into the chest of the offending man, into the spine. His hand was through Hawke, then, through Fenris, through a dark haired girl, through the red haired elf with the magelight, and the whole thing shattered again. Then suddenly he was falling, falling. He wasn't broken, wasn't disoriented, when he hit the ground, but he was surrounded by footfalls, by blood, by pulling, down, down, and the Corypheus creature bending him over himself. All of it, all of it drove together with one, awful, thunderous song.

Somebody screamed.

He awoke to the sound of shouting and the feeling of weight and nauseating dread, the song still ringing in his head. Sweating and still only half-dressed, he wrapped the blanket around himself and felt his way across the room to the doorway, and beyond that to the bed where Lenya slept, crying and turning in her sleep. Lightly, he touched her arm, and then more forcefully, and she jolted awake, grabbing onto the offending arm and clinging to him in the dark.

She remained this way for several minutes, shivering violently into his shoulder as he silently attempted to calm his own rattled nerves. The song didn't fade. It hummed there in the back of his mind, discordant and strange, at once alluring and horrifying. Finally Lyna released him and drew herself into a ball, shaky breaths wracking her small body. "Go away," she sobbed quietly. "Go away go away go away go away."

"Commander?" Anders touched her shoulder lightly, and instead of pulling away from it, she leaned into the touch.

"It's too late, Anders, I took too long, I didn't find-" She pressed her eyes shut, pushing her face into her arms. "I'm going to die."

center.

...

./center

 _"I was dragged away from home because, fuck it, I needed treatment and the Grey Wardens had something and who cares if I'd have rather died than wander off with some Shemlen bastard-"_

 _"Oh, boo hoo, must suck to have a family up until-well, ever, really. My father tossed me to the chantry as a boy and_ I _wasn't even a danger to anyone."_

 _"Oh fuck off, you asked about it." Lyna folded her arms across her chest and turned her eyes away from him, glaring off at the window._

 _"Well I didn't know I was asking for the privilege of being told a sob story about how you get to live in a nice cushy castle instead of the wilderness now, did I?" Anders rolled his eyes, leaning back in his seat. "When the king himself deigns to meet us, should I ask him about the horrors of having everyone cater to his slightest whim?"_

 _"That's some bullshit and you know it." She turned on him, jaw clenched. Anders wasn't sure how he had missed her hand curled into a tight fist in her lap, or the way her lips bent into a thin line. "I walked through living hell for a year, two, to protect people who spat on me, knowing I could never go home, knowing-Alistair fucking did it too. He's not some bastard we dropped on the throne for no reason. He doesn't like ruling any more than I do."_

 _Anders knew he should stop pressing, but annoyance, pent up over days, a week now, spurred him onward. "Oh yes, the poor warden commander, laid low by a room full of squabbling banns, recruiting poor souls into a death march she herself laments participating in."_

 _"They wanted to kill you, you bastard!"_

 _"So does everyone. I'm afraid that's just the way I live my life."_

 _"Would you_ rather _have lived it in a jail cell in some godforsaken tower somewhere? I could arrange for it."_

 _"Well this is hardly much different now, is it? I'm just in your prison now, instead of one full of templars, but don't worry because I'm sure if you ever need one you'll just make eyes at the one in Denerim and he'll be right over." He had crossed a line. He saw it in her eyes, and in her stiffened shoulders, and it was funny because he'd thought he'd crossed the line when he'd started this. There had been a second line he didn't know about. Where the first one had felt dangerous, this one was just a broken thread. The warden commander didn't move. Part of him wondered if he had won._

 _"Anders," she said, breaking the silence she had allowed to fill the room. Her voice was low and tired, and she did not look him in the eyes. "You can hate me, if that's what you need. And for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry." She sighed, and suddenly Anders felt as though he was looking at a young woman, only just an adult, and far too tired, too bitter, too broken for her age. Looking at her now, the idea of winning by pressing enough buttons felt stupid and petty. "If you need to, you can go. But I can't protect you if you do."_

 _He felt his anger leech away. Twisting anxiety rose up to take its place, and then regret. For once in his life, there wasn't a clever quip to break the tension, to make it as though the conflict had never happened or twist it into something darkly funny. "We're alright," he said, in-he didn't know, an apology? Forgiveness? Reassurance?_

 _"We're not okay," the Commander said softly._

 _It was Anders' turn to sigh. "No, we really aren't. We will be, though. I'm not up and leaving."_

 _The Commander smiled a wobbly smile, nearly a grimace. "I guess I'll take it."_


End file.
